“We want to have fair, honest elections in our state and so we have been put in a position that we have to sue the federal government to get this information,” Scott said today, making the announcement this afternoon on Fox News.

Florida last year began looking for non-U.S. citizens on the voter rolls. A comparison of driver’s license records with voter registration records turned up as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be U.S. citizens.

State officials have asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for access to its SAVE system — a compilation of at least a dozen immigration databases — to help it determine how many non-citizens are registered to vote in Florida. But that request has been turned down by the DHS.

Republicans want to increase their chances of winning close elections by disenfranchising core Democratic voting blocs such as the poor, the elderly, minorities and the young.